Conflicting imaginaries of home and care in urban renewal
This panel and exhibition event brought together leading researchers from different international contexts to examine the experiences and struggles of home, care and belonging under conditions of displacement and racial banishment.
In a time of acute housing crisis, belonging, home and care have never been more present. Urban renewal projects are imagined as solutions yet cause displacement of lives and livelihoods. As people struggle to maintain home, community and belonging, a disjuncture emerges between state imaginaries of urban renewal and community concepts of care and belonging grounded in place. Who is renewal really for and whose imaginaries of belonging and home are at work?
David Kelly addresses contemporary public housing policy in Melbourne and its role in processes of racial banishment. Farhana Akther brings a view from Dhaka, Bangladesh of the experiences of older women in adjusting/compromising their living after being rehoused from informal settlements into large government housing projects. And Maryam Fanni speaks from the Swedish context where the aesthetics of urban renewal can be read as a certain kind of nostalgia promoting white imaginaries in post-war suburbs.
This event took place on 16 November 2023, you can watch the full discussion below.
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